HP Drabble: Misery Loves Company
Title: Misery Loves Company
Author: mrstater
Fandom: Harry Potter
Characters & Pairings: Hermione Granger, Neville Longbottom, Ron/Hermione
Rating & Warnings: rated G
Format & Word Count: drabble, 320 words
Summary: After the war, Hermione has much to cope with, and it's Neville, not Ron, who helps her learn how.
Author's Note: Written for lu_bloom for International Women's Day 2011.
She loves Ron, she truly does, but there are some things he will never understand, and not because he has the emotional depth of a teaspoon. She's glad he doesn't understand, because she'd never wish this kind of pain on anyone else--well, maybe on her worst enemy, and she has a few of those, because she's not that compassionate.
All the same, she can't say she's not grateful she has someone to talk to about this.
"How do you cope?" she asks Neville over a Firewhisky in a dark corner of The Hog's Head, where they can't break the habit of going in the summer after the war. "How do you get over your parents not knowing you?"
Neville sits hunched over his pint for a long time, Hermione recalling that Christmas on the Closed Ward when they'd learnt the truth about his parents. At first glance his posture looks very like he did then, but the down-turned face has lost the softness, the planes of his face more angular and defined, not hardened by his struggles, but strengthened, toned, like the muscles of an athlete. She notes the taut tendon in his neck , his shoulders squared, not bowed. There is nothing apologetic about him now, no trace of embarrassment.
When he looks up at her, his eyes are so bright, so bold, that Hermione gasps.
"You don't get over it," he says. "You just live with it."
"But how?"
"By living the life they'd want to see you living."
Hermione raises her tankard to her lips, and Neville gives her a small, wry smile.
"Not very profound advise, I'm afraid."
"No," Hermione agrees. Then she stands, drawing her handbag over her shoulder. "But deeper than a teaspoon by a fair bit."
"So's Ron," says Neville.
"I know," Hermione replies, and goes home to do some of that living here parents would want her to live, with him.
Author: mrstater
Fandom: Harry Potter
Characters & Pairings: Hermione Granger, Neville Longbottom, Ron/Hermione
Rating & Warnings: rated G
Format & Word Count: drabble, 320 words
Summary: After the war, Hermione has much to cope with, and it's Neville, not Ron, who helps her learn how.
Author's Note: Written for lu_bloom for International Women's Day 2011.
She loves Ron, she truly does, but there are some things he will never understand, and not because he has the emotional depth of a teaspoon. She's glad he doesn't understand, because she'd never wish this kind of pain on anyone else--well, maybe on her worst enemy, and she has a few of those, because she's not that compassionate.
All the same, she can't say she's not grateful she has someone to talk to about this.
"How do you cope?" she asks Neville over a Firewhisky in a dark corner of The Hog's Head, where they can't break the habit of going in the summer after the war. "How do you get over your parents not knowing you?"
Neville sits hunched over his pint for a long time, Hermione recalling that Christmas on the Closed Ward when they'd learnt the truth about his parents. At first glance his posture looks very like he did then, but the down-turned face has lost the softness, the planes of his face more angular and defined, not hardened by his struggles, but strengthened, toned, like the muscles of an athlete. She notes the taut tendon in his neck , his shoulders squared, not bowed. There is nothing apologetic about him now, no trace of embarrassment.
When he looks up at her, his eyes are so bright, so bold, that Hermione gasps.
"You don't get over it," he says. "You just live with it."
"But how?"
"By living the life they'd want to see you living."
Hermione raises her tankard to her lips, and Neville gives her a small, wry smile.
"Not very profound advise, I'm afraid."
"No," Hermione agrees. Then she stands, drawing her handbag over her shoulder. "But deeper than a teaspoon by a fair bit."
"So's Ron," says Neville.
"I know," Hermione replies, and goes home to do some of that living here parents would want her to live, with him.